


Pinioned

by Megan



Category: Dragon Age
Genre: Anthropomorphism - Freeform, Crack Pairing, F/F, Inanimate Object Porn, Magic, New Game Plus Challenge, Shapeshifting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-10-24
Updated: 2011-10-24
Packaged: 2017-10-24 22:04:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,310
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/268371
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Megan/pseuds/Megan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Merrill has the opportunity to learn a few things from Flemeth. Given her total lack of regard for powerful forces of questionable morality, she's not about to pass that up.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Pinioned

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Cephalopod](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cephalopod/gifts).



> For the prompt _Shapechanging used for comic and/or erotic effect. I refuse to believe you can only change into animals. There's swords, tents, bread, pants..._

Rivain is... different, really, and Merrill doesn't like to complain (especially not when there are so many good things here, like the weather and the fact they don't follow Andraste and especially the fact that nobody looks twice at her if she uses magic). But it will never cease to be something she bites her tongue to keep from complaining about when somebody bumps into her in the crowded marketplace. It's even worse than Kirkwall, because the people here aren't doing it to try and steal from her and so looking penniless and Dalish doesn't make her not worth their time.

"Watch where you're going, pet," the woman who's run into her says, not unkindly, and really, why is it always _Merrill_ who's the one not paying any mind to where she's walking? Surely they realize that sometimes it's their fault, too, and Merrill's about to take charge of the situation (Varric would be so proud!) and say just that when she gets distracted by someone on the other side of the road. The woman bustles off with a good-natured murmur of _must be a shaman, dear girl_ that she barely hears because she's too interested in who she's just spotted.

What on Thedas is _Asha'bellanar_ doing in Rivain?

"Wait!" Merrill can't help but call out as the woman in the feathered pauldrons and cloak turns to leave. Really, does she need such a thing in Rivain? Merrill's long since given up her chain mail, partly in deference to the warm weather and partly because she's fairly certain nobody wants to stab her in the back. Well, besides Hawke on occasion when Merrill forgets to do something important. And she can already hear her friends disapproving ( _you have no survival instinct, Daisy_ , Varric would say, and _what am I going to do with you, Merrill?_ is what Hawke probably will say later), but this is an opportunity she can't pass up-- how many people meet Asha'bellanar even once, much less _twice?_ Merrill doesn't trust spirits and she doesn't cower in fear of the Dread Wolf, and she'll be just as careful and brave now.

"Awfully excited to meet an old woman, child," Asha'bellanar says, and this _has_ to be her, the voice is the same and everything.

"Oh, but you're Asha'bellanar!" Merrill can't help but say, as the very thought of this woman being nothing but someone shopping for trinkets in a Rivaini market is completely ridiculous.

"Very few people in Rivain know that legend," Asha'bellanar says, and she sounds as if she can't decide between being amused at Merrill's bumbling or being irritated because she would rather keep few people in Rivain knowing that legend. It's actually rather like listening to Hawke sometimes, even if Hawke wouldn't care much for being compared to whom she called the Witch of the Wilds. Then Asha'bellanar's expression changes, in a way that's both completely familiar territory for Merrill _and_ distinctly uncomfortable because it's such. She looks like a spirit who's just realized it has a potential bargain in front of it. "Though I suppose you would, at that. You're the girl who did what Keeper Marethari would not, back on Sundermount. For that I suppose I owe you a bit of a debt-- Hawke's service to me was her own repayment, but you and I had no such arrangement. What is it you came for, child?"

"I--" Merrill hadn't called out to her out of _wanting_ anything, really! It's just that it's so _exciting_ to see someone like Asha'bellanar, especially for a _second_ time, and she would really just prefer to talk because she's heard things about accepting gifts from this woman-who-isn't. "I suppose I'd like to learn a bit of magic, if you would."

"You already know more than a bit, I daresay," Asha'bellanar said. "The People have lost much, and many Keepers would not have been able to perform the ritual you did with enough power to release me. But I probably have something you might find useful, at that. Come along, then, it's not as if I can teach you anything in the middle of the marketplace."

 

Asha'bellanar, as it turns out, has taken accommodations here in Llomerryn, and the room Merrill finds herself seated in is crushingly mundane. She... well, she doesn't really know what she expected, but it certainly isn't this. A lair, perhaps, a lair full of grimoires and artifacts and perhaps the bottled souls of her enemies-- certainly not a regular inn room in the middle of Rivain.

"I would offer you some tea, but it seems my shopping was interrupted by an overly curious Dalish girl to whom I owe a favor," Asha'bellanar says, and Merrill can feel her face turning red.

"Sorry!" She says, and raises her hands up defensively. "I really am sorry! I-- I didn't mean to interrupt, it's just that you're _Asha'bellanar_ , and--"

"It's all right, child," Asha'bellanar says with surprising gentleness. "Were there not a favor owed, you would not be here and I would have my tea. That is my own fault, not yours. Now, what is it you wish to learn?"

"Do you know any magics my people have lost?" It's been obvious what Merrill needs to ask about, ever since the words _I suppose I'd like to learn a bit of magic_ , if you would had slipped out of her mouth. Asha'bellanar is ancient and terrible and has had enough dealings with elvhenkind to wear her own name among them, so surely she must know something.

"I know many," Asha'bellanar tells her. "Some of which you could not learn and I could not teach. I hear that you came across a dreamer in Kirkwall-- that is such a piece of magic. Though I suppose the templars killed that boy."

"No, he's gone to Tevinter," Merrill corrects, and then puts a hand over her mouth in shame because she's just _corrected Asha'bellanar_.

"Good," is all Asha'bellanar says, the satisfaction evident in her voice. "The magisters will need all the help they can get. It's only a matter of time before this Exalted March on all of magedom turns into a civil war in the Imperium." She sounds rather like she hopes to be there, for all that. "There are a few things I could teach you and that you could learn, however, things once known by the smallest child of the elvhen but now completely lost. I could teach you to take the form of the beasts of the wild, I've always been fond of that one."

Merrill has seen Asha'bellanar turn into a dragon and take wing into the sky over Sundermount. She has heard stories of the witches called Flemeth's Daughters by the shemlen, who can take wing as birds or run as wolves and, some stories say, take the faces of other humans to trick them. There are stories of the Dread Wolf taking the form of a hunter, stories of the other gods taking the shape of animals. Surely this is not something anyone besides Asha'bellanar can do, and she says so.

"Hah!" Asha'bellanar's laugh rings out through the small inn room. "I assure you, the stories of my daughters taking the faces of others are just that-- stories. It would be quite impossible for any of them to do. My Morrigan claims to have done it, but that girl is so full of lies it's quite astounding. Never did I _meet_ such a difficult child. No, I cannot change my shape into another person, nor can my daughters, nor any other human on the face of Thedas. But you, child-- _you_ could. _That_ was a gift known only among the People. I imagine it's why living near the shem makes your lives shorter; you're all trying to turn into someone else. I _do_ wonder what you all looked like before you met the shemlen."

"Why would I want to turn into someone else?" Merrill can only wonder; she doesn't particularly _want_ to be someone else. There had been a few times she would have wished for that very thing, of course, but it's not as if that would have made the problem go away. Marethari would still be dead and her clan still wouldn't listen to what she tried to do for them, Merrill would just be wearing a different face.

"It would have come in very handy when you and your Hawke were fleeing Kirkwall, would it not?" Asha'bellanar asks, and Merrill has to wonder if she knows _everything_ that happens.

"Not really, actually!" Merrill regrets it as soon as she says it-- really, so bold with a woman who can turn into a dragon?-- but plunges on anyway. "Because they were looking for Hawke, not me, and _she_ would look the same. Or well, I suppose they were looking for me, too, but all Dalish look sort of the same to the humans. Nobody ever really noticed me when we ran."

Asha'bellanar laughs again. For a monster, she has a very nice laugh.

"You amuse me as very few do, girl," she says finally. "Your clan lost a treasure of a Keeper when you left. You might have even kept them safe during the Exalted March, at least for a time."

Merrill doesn't want to think of the Exalted March bearing down on the Free Marches, and _especially_ doesn't want to think about what will happen to the Dalish caravan living on Sundermount. They're Merrill's clan, and the clan that had taken in a known runaway apostate. Maybe they'll head back to Ferelden-- there's news almost every week of how King Alistair has granted amnesty to mages and Dalish and Rivaini and anyone else in the Free Marches the Chantry suddenly finds intolerably inconvenient. His armies fight templars and it's all but assured that the next Exalted March will be on Ferelden, or maybe just the Grey Wardens (they did give the world King Alistair and Warden-Commander Cousland and _Anders_ ). There are rumors of an alliance with the Tevinter Imperium, which makes her hope for Fenris' sake that wherever Isabela's ship is right now it's far from any waters involved in _that_.

Funny how she even babbles on in her own mind, when she gets left to her own devices like this. Or, well, Hawke thinks it's funny; Merrill doesn't personally see what's so amusing about it. Especially not now, when she's (quite rightfully) worried about their friends.

"But you didn't come here to dwell on that," Asha'bellanar says shrewdly, and picks up a feather from the table. It looks like the ones on her pauldrons, dark and shiny like a crow's feather. "You came here to learn a lost bit of magic. Does the thought of shapeshifting appeal to you, if it's not into another person?"

"Oh, yes," Merrill says. "I'd quite like that, as long as it wasn't turning into someone else. I think _that_ would be rather scary. And a bit disgusting! But turning into an animal would be quite nice, I think."

She could fly, or run through the woods like the Dread Wolf, or buzz around like a bumblebee. That would be great fun, living on a flower for a day. Or she could chase around Hawke's mabari, give him as good as he got for once!

"Are you going to teach me a bird first?" Merrill asks-- the idea planted by the feather between Asha'bellanar's fingers-- and she's so eager that she's almost tripping over her words.

"No," Asha'bellanar says. "You have to start small. It's very easy-- particularly for one of your kind, I would imagine-- to get too much into a form, and have trouble getting out of it. You need to start with things that aren't alive, things that have no mind to shape your own into something you're not used to."

Merrill deflates a little bit as quickly as she'd gotten excited, until Asha'bellanar runs the feather up the inside of her arm. _That_ makes Merrill jump up in her chair with a little bit of a squeak.

"You have to know what you're going to change into, especially when you're a novice." Asha'bellanar speaks as if she isn't running a feather from Merrill's fingertip to her elbow in a ticklish sweep that makes Merrill's hand flex on each pass. It's... well, very ticklish, in a peculiar sort of way.

"Am I supposed to think about being the feather?" Merrill asks, thinking of the childish training exercises she'd both used herself and passed on to children in the clan who've shown a talent for magic.

"Certainly not," is Asha'bellanar's immediate reply. The look she gives Merrill is one that threatens to regret her offer of a lesson. "That habit will lead you straight into an unintended lifetime in a form not your own. You'll need to _own_ the feather, take on its form but force your mind upon it. It should be an easy enough thing for you to do-- treat it like one of your spirits."

Spirits, not demons. Even if she doesn't seem to understand how Merrill (who's never ruled a thing in her life, honestly, not even the halla she tried to raise once), or really blood magic at all, at least Asha'bellanar has enough respect for a practice not her own to name it what it is.

"Trying to rule a spirit or a demon is the fastest way I know to get yourself into trouble, even faster than trusting one." It's the first thing Merrill's said with any measure of confidence all day, and it's something she'll never hesitate to say. Not to abominations who don't listen until it's too late, not to Hawke who trusts to readily, not to her Keeper and not to this ancient, wise, terrifying woman before her.

Asha'bellanar just _looks_ at her then, long enough that Merrill can't help but wonder if fire will come pouring right out of her eyes as it does the dragon's mouth.

"Perhaps I am not wasting my time here, at that," she says, and presses the feather into Merrill's palm. "Try it-- you will come to no harm if you can't truly master something with no mind of its own, so there is no reason not to try."

Trusting her is possibly even stupider than Anders trusting Justice for so long, and Hawke will give her such a scolding for it later-- but one thing every story about Flemeth or Asha'bellanar or the Witch of the Wilds agrees on is that she keeps to her debts, be they owed to her or (rarely enough) by her. So Merrill takes hold of the feather, light and warm in her palm, and closes her eyes. What is one supposed to say to start such a spell, in any case? Asha'bellanar hasn't said.

"Now, let go of your shape while you concentrate on taking on the shape of the feather. Your magic will do the rest." Surely it can't be that easy, or it never would have been lost to begin with, would it? Though it's silly as soon as she thinks it, because her people have lost even simpler things. Like their gods, and the language they must have spoken every day once. But she mustn't think on random historical tangents now, or else she might risk turning into some dusty old tome and Asha'bellanar will stick her on a bookshelf somewhere. Think of the feather, think of the feather--

 _Oh_. It's quite dark, isn't it? And quiet; feathers don't have ears any more than they do eyes, so it makes sense. It's not really scary when she thinks of it that way, that this is quite an ordinary day for a feather. Not that feathers have days, of course, unless they're feathers that are actually Merrill. She can _feel_ , though, which she supposes is normal as well; a bird can feel it if you pluck out its feathers. The tabletop is rough under her, but not unpleasantly so; it actually feels rather nice, if so very _strange_. She can feel the draft all over her, too, and then a sudden shock of warmth and gentle pressure on both sides-- Asha'bellanar must have Merrill between her fingers. And then back down on the table, because the cool roughness is back.

When the sudden warmth skates down her entire front, tingling and firm enough to press her down against the tabletop and entirely unexpected, it alights all through her in a way that's entirely new and very much overwhelming. When it comes again and again ( _Asha'bellanar's finger_ , she realizes a little bit hazily, there are tiny rough ridges on it that must be the whorls on her fingertip) it builds and builds. Merrill tries reflexively to arch her back and curl her toes, but of course that doesn't work; all she can do is lay still under the constant influx of pleasure.

It rises far past the point where she knows she'd orgasm if she had a body capable of that just now, so far that she's not sure where she ends and everything else begins-- there's the roughness rubbing along her back and the desperately pleasurable pressure pinning her down from top to bottom in slow passes and oh, it feels like her entire body is gone. She's not a feather anymore, she's nothing but a shower of sparks like a child's first little bit of magic--

\--and she cracks her head against the table as her entire body arches, but she doesn't care. Her bare toes press against the wood and she reaches down, desperately, to where she's throbbing far past any point she's ever been. She doesn't even have to get inside her leggings; the first brush of her palm is enough to set her writhing and crying out as she's ached to do for the past few interminable minutes. It's an explosion freed from its confines, howling all along her with enough force to shake the table under her.

"It's very easy to lose yourself in something else," Asha'bellanar says when Merrill can finally hear again. "Consider that the most important lesson you've learned today, whether you pursue further instruction in shapeshifting or continue down your path of blood magic."

"Further-- but wasn't this one lesson?" Merrill manages to ask weakly, and uses the thought of owing Asha'bellanar a debt as motivation to open her eyes and get off the table on shaky legs. Oh, but this is humiliating now that it's over and she's standing in front of a woman who can turn into a dragon and she's _just had it off in her clothes on an inn room table_.

"I took your champion's entire family past the Blight in exchange for her bringing the amulet to you," Asha'bellanar says, and at least she looks anything but disgusted or surprised by what's just happened. That makes it rather more bearable. "Surely I owe you more than one small lesson in the art in return for releasing me from it. This will put you in no debt to me, child-- merely further remove me from yours."

She presses the first feather, the one she'd had Merrill hold, into Merrill's hand and gives her that same satisfied smile she'd had when Merrill told her Feynriel had gone to Tevinter.

"Keep it," Asha'bellanar says. "A talisman, of sorts. I will expect you to have more control when you next visit me."

There are a hundred questions Merrill could ask just now-- _why are you in Rivain, how long will you be here, surely you know I'll tell Hawke about this as soon as I leave, why should I come back_ \-- but she just manages a nod.

"Good," Asha'bellanar says, as if Merrill's given her some answer instead of a barely-there nod of her head. "You have potential, girl. I would hate to see it wasted."


End file.
